R E C I C L A R I O
in collaboration with Sara Coelho Galán
RECICLARIO is a project and series of portraits which originates from our regular rounds of dumpster diving -the practice of salvaging and reutilizing waste as an alternative to the consumption circuits of capitalism-, together with the conception of ordinary and day-to-day life as a space for creativity.
Each and every one of the objects appearing in the photographs was rescued from the street, from dusty closets, from oblivion, from the garbage. Objects and the meanings they carry are the starting point for the playful activity of spontaneously and collectively generating different environments and sceneries.
These fictional universes are co-created and inhabited by the characters, and that is when photography comes in, as a great means of depicting in each portrait the particular ways of performing our identities:
What parts of ourselves do we consider a residue, undesirable, unworthy?
Can we dumpster dive among the shameful, 'dirty', left-aside parts of us?
Can we reclaim, recover, resignify them?
Can we restore the dignity in being who we are and having the life we have?
The name comes from combining the Spanish words for recycling and reliquary: with references to mythological art and classical family portraiture we attempt to present the contemporary complexity, through the powerful presence of the objects and the people pictured, who stand staring right back at the observer, we intend to make garbage a source of beauty and empowerment.
RECICLARIO, with waste as a starting point, generates symbolic universes which are less logical, less normative, with more freedom and awkwardly beautiful, with people and their peculiarities, reclaimed and dignified, right in the center.
This portrait was a special collaboration with Mariana from @hilando____, a Madrid-based textile artist working with old and abandoned garments.
the process:
the portraits:
